Archive for June, 2010

I tell you, packing for space travel is a lot of work. You need a spacecraft, breathing apparatus, a lifetime supply of Tang and astronaut ice cream, and now it seems having a third eye would be handy, too.

Back in April, researchers Andrew Hamilton and Gavin Polhemus of the University of Colorado, built a computer model to simulate what entering a black hole would look like.

However, the simulation only works so far. Hamilton and Polhemus realized that once you’re inside the black hole you’d no longer be able to judge distances because of our pesky binocular vision. With two eyes, we’re able to see the same object from slightly different angles. Combining those angles allows us to triangulate the object’s distance. In a black hole, where space is so strongly curved, everything gets messed up. At least, until you get a third eye. Hamilton speculates that having a third eye would allow you to compensate for the gravitational distortion and you’d be able to see.

by Tiffani Righero, Research Assistant, Fort Collins Local History Archive

Over the years, I have compiled a mental list of historical figures I would love to meet. Most of them are average people. Some had large impacts on social and cultural lifestyles. A few are ancestors. Only one was a political leader, and none were presidents. Recently I came across a series of portraits in the Local History Archive and decided I must add William Clifford “Cliff” Brollier to this list. Brollier may not have been a prominent Fort Collins figure, but he knew how to have fun. From the suave gentleman (bottom left), to the goofy joker (bottom right) to the casual dog-friendly man (top middle right), Brollier looks like quite a character.

These portraits, taken around 1907, were donated to the Local History Archive by Brollier’s daughter Doris Greenacre. She clarified that the dog did not belong to him and said these were just some fun pictures he had taken.

As I dug through the archive, I found a little more about Brollier’s life. According to census records and city directories, he was a bookkeeper for an oil company and lived at 307 Mathews St. with his wife and two daughters. Another photograph in the archive of Brollier shows him on a bicycle in front of the old Elks building at the corner of Linden Street and Walnut Street.

As you might guess from the plethora of flags, this shot was captured during a 4th of July celebration circa 1913. Even on the bike, Brollier has a smirk on his face for the cameraman.

From these photos, Cliff Brollier looks like an interesting fellow; I have added him to my list of historical figures I would like to meet. Who’s on your list?

I’m setting my alarm clock for 5:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to get up (as I’m still a firm believer that there’s only one 5:00 in the day, and it comes just before dinner), but if I can, I’m in for a treat. So are many of you, if you’re better at being an early riser than I am.

Early, early tomorrow morning, June 26, a partial lunar eclipse will happen when the moon passes through the southern portion of the Earth’s shadow. The best place to see this eclipse will be in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Sadly, Africa, parts of Europe, and even the eastern edge of New England won’t see anything, but out here in Colorado we’ll be able to see a “bite” taken out of the moon as the moon is setting at the end of the night.

The moon will slide into partial eclipse at 4:17 a.m. MST, and will be deepest in shadow at 5:39 a.m. MST as the moon sets in the southwest and the sun begins to rise. It’s sure to be a pretty sight – a partially eclipsed moon in the predawn twilight.

A bit of trivia for you: Lunar eclipses can only happen when the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned very closely. Hence, there’s always a full moon (when the moon is closest to the Earth) when there’s a lunar eclipse. The next full lunar eclipse will happen on December 21, 2010.

The vuvuzela has an interesting history tied to the South African Shembe Church. Introduced by the prophet Isiah Shembe in 1910, the vuvuzela has been used in religious ceremonies for the past one hundred years. Similar to the kudu horn (made from the horn of a kudu antelope, of course) the vuvuzela was originally created from cane wood. When used properly, the horn is believed to produce miracles including the healing of the ill and injured.

One may ask, “If the vuvuzela can work wonders in the church, then why not on the football pitch?” Many members of the Shembe Church would carry their horns to the football matches that often followed their morning services. Some would compose songs for the vuvuzela to cheer on their favorite team. By the late 1980s, the elongated horns had become a regular sight at many matches throughout South Africa.

The ubiquitous plastic versions, frequently seen and constantly heard during World Cup matches, wouldn’t be introduced until the 90s when Neil van Schalkwyk began to manufacture the horns commercially.

The sound of the vuvuzela is produced by blowing a “raspberry” into the mouthpiece of the flared instrument. This causes the lips to open and close more than 200 times a second, setting up resonance within the horn. Producing sound at a frequency of roughly 235 hertz, the shape of the horn can set up harmonics ranging from 470 to 1630 hertz.

In the hands of a trained musician, the vuvuzela can produce pleasing tones much like a trumpet. Several thousand sports fans blowing into cheaply produced plastic versions of the horn can, on the other hand, sound like a swarm of slightly inebriated bees. This is where the problem lays.

Our hearing is a form of warning system that alerts us to potential danger. Constant sound may simply fall into the background as our brains process it as harmless white noise. Sudden changes in sound, however, may indicate danger and keep us more alert. The variations at which a large crowd of vuvuzela tooting football fans may be playing creates a constant shift in the sound, or droning, that makes us very aware of its presence. In the absence of any immediate danger, this sound becomes merely annoying.

Of course, the vuvuzela may present a danger itself. (No, I’m not talking about what you’d like to do to Mr. van Schalkwyk for introducing the instrument to the masses.) The danger comes in the sound levels produced by just one vuvuzela, let alone thousands playing in unison. Flared instruments, such as trumpets or saxophones, produce much louder notes than their straighter brethren the clarinet. The vuvuzela is capable of reaching 116 decibels at one meter, much louder than is recommended for extended exposure. Audience members tested directly after a match have shown signs of temporary hearing loss.

If you plan on attending a live match during World Cup, I recommend some form of hearing protection. If you’re trying to enjoy the match from home, there are a few measures you can take to increase your enjoyment and decrease your desire to stick your fingers in your ears and make “lalalala, I can’t hear you!” noises.

First, check your television to see if you can adjust the audio. Turning down the treble may work wonders in dampening a good portion of the drone. If you have a surround sound system, turning down the left and right speakers will eliminate most of the crowd noise while the game announcers will likely be directed through the center speaker. The internet is also offering a variety of solutions including MP3 files of white-noise designed to cancel out the vuvuzela , and programs intended to filter out the range in which the “buzzing” occurs. Be careful in what you try, as some of the internet remedies reportedly are more irritating than the situation they claim to fix.

World Cup is a fantastic event that allows people from around the planet to share not only in sport, but also history, culture, and science. Now, if we could just get a few other countries to participate in the World Series…

I experienced my own personal Make Way for Ducklings recently. As I was leaving the Museum one the evening, I spotted a mama Mallard marching purposefully across Library Park in a northeasterly direction, followed closely by her ducklings. They were tiny!

Mama Mallards try to lay their eggs in nests well protected from potential predators, such as raccoons and coyotes. This means that mothers sometimes nest as much as a mile away from water. Given the size of the ducklings and their presence here in Library Park, I believe these were newly hatched ducklings being lead by their mother to water for their first swim.

I watched mama lead her offspring eastbound on the sidewalk of Oak Street, across Peterson (in the crosswalk no less) to Whedbee, where again she crossed in the crosswalk north bound towards (oh no!) Riverside. She followed a wooden fence on the west side of Whedbee until she reached the T intersection.

What a nightmare! It was 6pm on a Friday evening, traffic whizzing by on Riverside, a very busy, 4-lane street, filled not just with regular auto traffic but semis, too, taking a short cut off of I-25 to connect with 287 to Laramie, Wyoming – all of the vehicles easily traveling 50 mph or more.

I sat in my car across the street from her and watched. She approached the intersection and upon hearing a vehicle approach, she dashed back against the wooden fence, ducklings hot on her webbed toes. She would crouch low, only the top of her head showing. She blended in so well to her surroundings that sometimes I lost her, even though I was trying to keep a close eye on her! After many false starts, she took the plunge, so to speak, off the sidewalk, six ducklings in a row behind her.

I appointed myself Officer Mike in this life-imitating-art crisis. With cars coming from both directions, I gunned my vehicle into the road, figuring those other drivers were more likely to see me in my car than the little fluffy balls in the street. And I was right – as I yelled and held up my left hand at the driver of a large white SUV to make him stop, he looked surprised, if not a little angry, to see me in his right-of-way. I knew the instant he saw the ducklings, through, because he broke out with a big grin!

The ducklings safely crossed the street and I let my car idle at the curb where they attempted to jump up onto the grass to follow their mother. One, two, three made it up. Three didn’t, jumping over and over and landing on their backs almost every time. To my horror, they took off on their own, following the gutter north. I drove slowly behind them with my hazards blinking so that people would pass me on the left and not come close to the little hatchlings on the right. They made it to the entrance of the auto repair shop on the corner of Mountain and Riverside and ran up the ramp. I pulled in after them, hopped out of my car and “herded” them back in the direction I last saw mama.

(The person who started the saying “it’s like herding cats” obviously never herded ducklings.)

I didn’t see mama again; however, ducklings are known to become separated from mothers. Most times, mama will circle back through an area “calling” for the ducklings, who constantly peep. In this way they can reunite.

Since my adventure, I’ve done some reading about ducklings. Most websites I read stated that it is best not to interfere with mamas and ducklings beyond stopping traffic when they attempt to cross a street. By interfering, you can unintentionally make a bad situation worse. My herding may have done just that but I’ll never know.

I am contemplating, though, putting a little “duckling ramp” on the north side of Riverside in case mama Mallard nests over here next year, which is likely, because females usually return to their own hatching locations for nesting as adults.

A team of archaeologists have found a leather shoe dating back to 5,500 years ago, while working in an Armenian cave at an elevation of 10,000 feet. The cool, dry conditions of the cave, described as being lined with sheep dung, created an almost perfect environment to preserve the leather material. The cave has proven to be a warehouse of discovery and the team has catalogued a variety of other well-preserved artifacts including a broken pot and sheep horns – that dung had to come from someplace. They’ve also come across a variety of containers holding dried apricots and barley.

So well-preserved was this shoe specimen that the scientists have been able to determine that the maker used vegetable-based oil in the tanning process. While DNA analysis has not been viable with the leather sample, a close examination of the material’s pores indicates that the leather most likely came from a cow. The style of the shoe has been compared to “Pampooties,” a lace-up bootie worn in the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland until the 1950s. Similarities to footwear found throughout Europe indicate that this style was in wide use for thousands of years and suited to a variety of environments.

This discovery predates the previous record holder for oldest leather shoe by a few hundred years. Found in 1991, the iceman known as Otzi to the general public (and “Frozen Fritz” to his close friends) sported a pair of leather shoes that dated back roughly 5,300 years. Of course, the oldest shoes currently known were more akin to socks; woven out of grass and wrapped in leather thongs made from deer and bear hide. What they may have lacked in style, they made up for in originality — dating back to more than 7,400 years before present. These were discovered in Arnold Research Cave, located in Callaway County in mid-Missouri.

Editor’s note: I was startled as I read Toby’s post to find Arnold Research Cave (ARC) invoked — as an anthropology undergrad at the University of Missouri, I did my archaeology field school at ARC in the summer of 1981. The shoes found at ARC were uncovered by a previous expedition; we were on the lookout for more, but didn’t uncover any additional specimens during that summer. Nor did we have any idea how old those shoes would turn out to be — they weren’t definitively dated until the late 90s. Small world!

Now that summer is here, it’s time to get serious about getting out and seeing some sights. If you live in northern Colorado, or are planning on visiting us, we’re excited to announce a new Google Maps-based driving tour that will take you to some of the truly outstanding places in our area.

“The Trails of Northern Colorado” is a website created by the Museum as part of a U.S. Park Service Preserve America grant. Literally over 12,000 years in the making, the website offers three different driving tours of the distinctive regions of northern Colorado — the foothills, the river, and the plains. Each tour consists of multiple stops, each with its own unique cultural and natural history story to tell. Taken together, the tour reveals many stories and hidden gems that even long-time residents may not be aware of.

I don’t want to give too much more away, other than to say “Go explore!” We really hope you’ll enjoy this great new resource.